Many are shocked to discover that a Temple to the Aphrodite (goddess of sexual lust) was built by Hadrian in around AD 135 over the location of Golgotha and the Tomb of Christ, as depicted below by National Geographic. In fact, a status of goddess was located directly over the site of the crucifixion of Chirst:

As in our own era, sexual exploitation may seek to bury the cross of Jesus, but the power of the cross will topple all idols dedicated to lust.

The reality of this blasphemy is depicted in my historical-fiction novel: Tenth Region of the Night, when Sabra (the young girl rescued in the Saint George legend) visits Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem) to see the Tomb of Christ only to find it sadly “buried beneath a Temple to Aphrodite.”

Asoldier nearby, noticing her beauty, wrongly concludes that she desires to visit the Temple of Aphrodite:

“I have no interest in the cultus,” she said quietly, heart pounding. “My interest is more…historical. Something happened outside the city’s old walls that interests me greatly, and I wish to see the site for myself. I…I did not know about the Temple of Aphrodite, in all truth.”

The soldier’s eyes widened. “This site you wish to see…do you mean to say, the site of mankind’s darkest hour?” he asked, his voice just as low as hers. “Am I wrong to think that is your interest?”

“Our darkest hour, and the brightest,” she said. “Victory disguised as defeat.”

“Something men of my calling can rarely understand,” he said, touching the mark of the Legion on his upper arm. “But that site has been buried for centuries, domina. Did no one tell you that?”

“Buried?” Sabra echoed. Her heart felt strangely numb. “Forgotten…”

“Not by all of us,” Orentius said softly. “I came early to the Legion, and late to the sea. I should rather have been a fisherman.”

I’m both delighted and relieved that I’ve finished writing the Sword and Serpent Trilogy about St George, Constantine, St Helena, St Christopher, St Catherine, and others: Book 3 is finished and the cover art is ready!

Read on if you’d like a free advanced pre-release copy:

Book 3 is titled Storm of Fire and Blood and it follows St George, St Christopher, and Constantine to Britain and back to Asia Minor as the Diocletian sparks off. The title refers to persecution of “fire and blood” that Diocletian initiated in AD 303.

My publication team will be choosing 200 “FIRE AND BLOOD Launch Team” readers who will receive a FREE advanced digital copy before the publication date and their name printed in the back of the book with a thank you message from me.

Here is who we are looking for in our Launch Team:

Readers who have read Sword and Serpent Book 1 or 2 already

Readers who can read the book in about 1 week

Readers who are willing to promote the book with a tweet or Facebook or Instagram post

William Shakespeare died on the feast day of Saint George: April 23.It fits nicely with Shakespeare’s play Henry V which features the battle cry:

Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish author of Don Quixote (and solder at Battle of Lepanto) also died on April 23.

It’s also worth noting that the novel Dracula begins on April 23, the feast of Saint George, since Dracula a “slaying the dragon myth.” Dracula translates as “little dragon.”

On of the the readers of my Saint George historical novel Sword and Serpent also recently pointed out the center placement of Saint George on the Russian Coat of Arms up until 1917 (year of Our Lady of Fatima):

Yes he is, so say the Eastern Catholics

Is Saint Christopher still a saint? It’s said that his feast day (July 25) was removed from the universal calendar, but was it? Actually it was not. It was removed from the General Roman Calendar of 1969. Saint Christopher is still liturgically celebrated by the Eastern Catholic Churches and by those churches celebrating the Latin Mass, which follow the General Roman Calendar of 1960.

Saint Christopher is an unnamed martyr who died for Christ either under the Roman Emperor Decius (249–251) or under the Roman Emperor Maximinus II Dacian (308–313). My research leads me to believe that the latter date is accurate.

The Legend of the Christophoros:

The legend is that an evil and gigantic Canaanite man named Reprobus (“reporobate”) was asked by a child to carry him across a river. As Reprobus carried the child, the child became heavier and heavier and nearly drowned the giant Reprobus.

The child revealed Himself as the Christ Child who bore the weight of all the sins of the world, especially those of Reprobus. The evil man repented and was baptized by Christ in that same river. His baptismal name became Christo-Phoros (Christ-bearer) since he ferried the Christ Child across the river.

Christopher is sometimes depicted with the head of a dog, since he was a Canaanite. But the term Canaanite was confused for “canine” meaning “dog.”

Saint Menas is venerated in Egypt and is also said to have carried the Christ Child. He was a Roman solider (like Saint George) who later abandoned the military to live a solitary life of a hermit. The association of Saint Menas with Egypt fits the Roman tradition of “Saint Christopher belonging to the Egyptian “Third Valerian Cohort of the Marmantae.”

Additionally, Christopher and Menas received martyrdom in Antioch, further linking their identity.

My hypothesis is that Menas (from Egypt) was martyred to the north in Antioch. The local Christians were not familiar with him but honored him simply as “he who bore Christ” or “Christophoros” and thus the Antiochian Christians called him “Saint Christopher,” and the Egyptian Christians called him by his actual name: “Saint Menas.”

Saint Christopher in Catholic Novel Format:

I tease out all these traditions in my historical-fiction trilogy Sword and Serpent. In the third novel (Book III: Storm of Fire and Blood; due Christmas 2017), while Saint George and Saint Christopher are in Britain, I have the pagan inhabitants mistaking Saint Christopher for the god Woden for reasons that will be entertaining and apparent if you read the Book II: Tenth Region of the Night.

I have a question for you from “The Catholic Perspective on Paul.” You make brief conversation about the protestant idea of ‘imputed righteousness’ by way of Luther, but didn’t discuss other verses he may have drawn that idea from. In particular, I know James White (a popular debater on YouTube) likes to quote from Romans 4 and the Psalm therein about the “blessed man to whom the Lord imputes to guilt” and makes a big deal about “God’s imputation of our sins to our account”, saying that even if we can be forgiven by the Sacrament of Penance, we would still be un-blessed because God “blames us” for our sins under the Roman system of Theology. Have you discussed this idea before? I would love to hear your thoughts

I was also curious what translation of the Bible you were quoting from in your books. While similar to the RSV2CE I own, I like many passages you quoted because they seem a bit more poetic than what I’m used to reading. What translation are you using?

Here is my response:

Dylan,

For Luther, Calvin (and White) imputation involves legal fiction. God says we are righteous, but we are not. God says we are not guilty, but we are guilty.

God (in Catholicism) does not impute guilt because Christ has actually taken the guilt away. It’s not legal fiction. The guilt is actually removed by Christ from the sinner’s soul. Hence, it is no longer imputed.

If Dylan owes me one million dollars, I could just pretend that you don’t owe me (Lutheranism) and say you are forgiven.

The Catholic way is that I actually give Dylan a million dollars and the debt is actually paid back to me.

Ultimately, the Lutheran way doesn’t even need Christ to die on the cross since nothing actually needs to be paid or transferred. God the Father just fudges the book-keeping for sinners.

The Catholic actually believes in an ontological (down the being of the soul) change in the soul of the sinner at ontological that is infused with grace, faith, hope, and charity. As long as this bond of charity is preserved, the soul is saved and all the guilt is removed.

I hope that helps.

Godspeed,

Taylor

PS: I use RSV translation but I use my own translation from Greek when I don’t prefer the RSV rendering.

April 23 marks the feast of Saint George and to celebrate I’ve asked amazon.com to mark down my #1 Best-Selling historical fiction novel on Saint George title Sword and Serpent: A Retelling of Saint George and the Dragon.

Sword and Serpent has been the best-selling Catholic fiction novel of the last couple years:

The story begins in AD 299 with an orphaned young man (the future Saint George) who begins a laborious journey with his sister to Rome. Along the way he meets figures such as Saint Christopher, Saint Blaise, Saint Nicholas, and others. The story climaxes with a mysterious encounter with an intellectual Dragon – but in a way that you may not be able to imagine yet. Let is suffice to say that it plays into the Catholic tradition of demonic apparitions…

Is there a reason why the name of Pontius Pilate was included in the second creed?

Pontius Pilate’s name is in the Creeds because it anchors the life of Christ into human history, specifically Roman history. If you interested in the redemptive meaning of Rome, the Roman Pontius Pilate, and the Roman cross of execution in the redemption of man by a Jewish Messiah, please see my book The Eternal City: Rome and the Origins of Catholicism.

There is a “tradition” that Pontius Pilate’s wife Claudia Procula had a dream of billions of people chanting “sub Pontio Pilato” over and over and over.

What she was hearing was the billions of Christians who recite “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.”

Most woman would be honored to know that their husband’s name would be on the lips of billions over a period of 20 centuries. But in the case of this Prefect of Judaea, it is the notorious reputation of being the remote efficient cause of Christ’s crucifixion.

The dream of “Claudia” is referred to in Matthew 27:19:

While Pilate was sitting in the judgment hall, his wife sent him a message: “Have nothing to do with that innocent man, because in a dream last night, I suffered much on account of him.”

If the tradition is true, she dreamed of the countless recitations and liturgical chants of “under Pontius Pilate.”

Origen is the first to mention that she converted to Christianity. She is a saint. In art, she is depicted as whispering into the ear of Pontius. Mel Gibson’s Passion depicts Claudia giving linens to the Blessed Mother to collect the Blood of Christ from the scourging.

Saint Claudia, pray for us.

If you’d like to take our courses on Historical Theology, the Creeds, the Councils, and Catholic Tradition, please sign up with us at newsaintthomas.com.

When I was Protestant, we relished in the belief that the Apostle Paul was thoroughly Protestant. We considered him to be the proto-Martin Luther. We believed that Paul taught:

justification by faith alone

once saved always saved

authority of Scripture alone (no Tradition)

sacraments as symbolic

However, there were always those little verses in Paul that made me feel uncomfortable. Here were things that we tried to ignore:

Paul rejoiced in being celibate – I didn’t know any celibate Protestant pastors that spoke like Paul did

Paul called himself “Father” in relation to his converts – he once refers to his ministry as “priestly”

he speaks of baptism transformative and saving

he speaks of obedience and good works quite often

he holds out the possibility that he might forfeit his own salvation through infidelity

This passages kept bubbling up until at last I saw that Protestantism couldn’t hold all the tension within these passages…and so I became Catholic.

After entering the Catholic Church, I wrote a simple and systematic explanation of nearly every major Catholic doctrine within the writings of Saint Paul.Not only does the book walk you step by step through Paul’s thoroughly sacramental and ecclesial theology, it also includes an appendix with all the verses in Paul – a kind of Pauline cheat sheet for Catholic theology. This appendix will save you hours of time looking for passages. It already arranged for you.

To celebrate Saint Paul’s own conversion, this book is half price today (and down to only $0.99 on Kindle): The Catholic Perspective on Paul.This is a great resource for anyone interested in Apologetics, Pauline theology, New Testament studies, or for anyone who wants to become familiar with Paul’s letters. Check out the Table of Contents and read a free sample here:

If you’ve read the book already, please leave a review by clicking here. I’d love to read your thoughts and I’d be grateful for your review.

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About Taylor

I am the author of the Amazon bestselling novel Sword and Serpent: A Retelling of Saint George and the Dragon, and 7 other published books on topic ranging from Judaism, Catholicism, Thomas, Aquinas, and Roman history.

I’m also the President of the New Saint Thomas Institute where we offer online theology classes to over 2,500 students in over 50 nations.

My wife Joy and I have eight children and we live near Colleyville, Texas.